Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM DECEMBER 2025 29 I f you saw the way redshirt freshman tight end Jack Larsen efforted for a loose football in the final seconds of Notre Dame's 49-20 win over Stanford, then you'd have seen all you needed to see to understand by no means was that a typical conclusion to a 29-point spanking in a regu- lar-season finale consisting of a double-digit win team ver- sus one that didn't finish with even half as many victories as its adversary. Far from typical. And yes, efforted, the verb version of that word. There are a lot of verbs worthy of describing Notre Dame's ef- fort — there's the noun — on its final offensive possession. Lollygagging would not be one of them. Neither would idling. The Irish put forth a significantly serious attack that was by no means aimless or carried out with intent of chewing up time. Of the 11 snaps Notre Dame took be- tween the 3:54 mark of the fourth quar- ter and triple zeroes, nine of them were called with intent to throw the ball. Backup quarterback Kenny Minchey fumbled on the final play of the game, and Larsen went sprawling for the rock as if his life depended on it. Like Notre Dame's College Football Playoff chances depended on it. Did they, really? Probably not. What difference would 56-20 have made? We won't ever know. What we do know is Notre Dame wanted that last score for style points or feel-good points or "we beat Stanford by more than Miami did" points or whatever you want to call them. Reality is, for as much as Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman lobbied for his team to qualify for the College Football Playoff on a SportsCenter hit immediately following the game and multiple times in his postgame press conference shortly thereafter, he didn't walk off the field at Stanford Stadium knowing for sure that the Irish were in. Whether or not they are will be news to him and the rest of us come the selec- tion show Dec. 7. Hence, the verbal posturing. "You talk about a team that is prob- ably playing as well as anyone right now, having won 10 straight games in a row, I think all of them by double-digit points," Freeman said, "and you want the 12 best teams now — I mean, I know you have the conference champions and the Group of Five highest-ranked team, but you talk about who are the best teams now, not Week 1, now, and it's hard to argue we aren't one of those teams." Miami beat Stanford by 35, by the way, and Pitt by 31. Notre Dame's re- spective margins of victory vs. those teams were 22 and 29. Miami beat Syra- cuse by 28, though, and Notre Dame pounded the Orange by 63. How's that for CFP résumé tug of war? The Hurricanes also beat the Irish straight-up, of course. They aren't shy to let anyone know. Rightfully so. That's big-time propaganda that goes beyond bragging rights. It should go straight to the CFP committee's ears. What the committee has been blast- ing in everyone else's ears for weeks, though, is a lot of the same rhetoric Freeman was finally able to spew as soon as his team's allotment of guar- anteed games had expired. The committee very clearly believes what Freeman does — Notre Dame is one of the 12 best teams in the country. The Irish have been ranked as such in every CFP poll of the year, including three consecutive placements of No. 9. So if the decision makers thought for the entire month of November that Notre Dame belonged in the playoff field, and nothing too chaotic oc- curred during rivalry week to throw a wrench in their lines of thinking, then why should they throw the Irish out of the bracket? They shouldn't, ex- cept if Alabama wins the SEC championship game and BYU beats Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game. That would be a disaster for Notre Dame. But if Georgia beats Bama or Tech takes care of BYU again, it should be wrap. The Irish should be in indeed. Notre Dame just needs one of those re- sults to clinch a spot in the playoff going by the way the committee has viewed it in every set of rankings it has released. Not having total control of the situa- tion is scary, but what Notre Dame did have control of was the way it played in the final 10 games of the regular season after losing the first two. And the Irish fared nearly as flawlessly as possible, all things considered. That's what playoff teams do. "We have this opportunity right now," Freeman said, "and it was like this every week. If you don't value what you have, you'll lose it. You'll lose that opportunity. You won't maximize it. … It's so true to life. If you don't focus on what you have and what you can control, you're not go- ing to maximize that opportunity." ✦ Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman improved his regular season record to 38-10 in his first four seasons with the win at Stanford. PHOTO BY CHUCK ARAGON Notre Dame Maximized Its Opportunity Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA